Sarah Curpen : “An aspiring civil engineer turns entrepreneur”

Still a 3rd year university student in civil engineering, Sarah Curpen has launched Minerals Attitudes, an SME dealing with high quality products. This article illustrates her journey as an entrepreneur.  

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Sarah Curpen founded Mineral Attitudes in September 2016 with the vision of providing Mauritians with quality beauty care products regardless of social class. She reveals that the whole idea came up out of necessity. “I wanted to pursue a Master’s degree but my parents were unable to afford the expenses associated with these studies. Moreover, I have always been passionate about taking care of my skin because I suffered from acne as a teenager. I discovered that the Dead Sea mud could efficiently cure acne during my first year of university.

I have been using all sorts of scrubs and I really wanted to move on to something more natural in order not to damage my skin and at the same time to have a more ecological approach to cosmetics. The process of making scrubs from Dead Sea salt and olive oil is well known and practiced to a great extent in Israel. It is this technique that I learned so as to produce scrubs,” she says.

The issue that bothered her at that particular moment was: “How to distinguish ourselves from the competitive and ferocious beauty care market?” She thought the core of the business should be different from others. She thus incorporated products that other competitors have not been using and have not marketed yet.

Product lines

Today, Mineral Attitudes holds over 200 products to meet with skin, body and hair care needs of women, men and children altogether. In order to maintain competiveness and consumer-friendly prices, the products are of high quality.

“The Dead Sea is a unique and one-of-a-kind source of vital vitamins and minerals, to assist in achieving the refreshed, rejuvenated and healthy skin appearance you had dreamed of. We work hard to bring the Dead Sea's essence directly to our customer’s doorstep and welcome them to discover the Dead Sea's healing secrets, right from the comfort of their homes.”

The young entrepreneur explains that the cosmetics products are manufactured according to international production regulations such as ISO and GMP. She states that all cosmetics products are not tested on animals and most are Paraben free. Over 25 of our face, body and hair products were dermatologically tested including the tearless shampoo and baby wash.

The target market is women between 20-65 years of age. The company is also trying to attract men with bath specific products such as bath salts and a cosmetic line dedicated to men care.

Challenges

As a small business person, she does not have a great deal of funding. “The competition with well established cosmetic brands is tough since they control the market and can afford huge marketing campaigns and launching events. Furthermore, my young age is sometimes a drawback in terms of convincing clients for a first trial. Business administration and administrative procedures are an everyday challenge, as most of the government offices are not computerized and I have to physically go to each office. This amounts to slow processes and time wastage.”

Major Project

The major project at the moment is the creation and development of a new scrub line 100% Mauritian, she says. “Based on Mauritian salt, it will be available in Chamarel coffee flavours, Tea, Tumeric, Vanilla and Coconut. These products will be marketed for tourists mainly,” she confides.